INTERCHANGEABLE ME

This, then, will be my epitaph:

          Haughty, naughty, cold as ice
          bet you can’t walk past me twice
          hold your glance
          don’t try to stare
          think that I am unaware?

But, did you ever think of my thoughts as I furtively gazed back at you?

No, you saw me as a woman only to mirror your desires

          for you I became a nurse, garbed all in white, to erase
               your childhood abandonment

          or a dancer, twirling lithely, on the stage of your ever-
               changing sexual imagination

          then a statue, standing breath-holding still while you
               conjured yet another me

          and sometimes a slut, dressing in 5-inch heels and
               spewing filth to arouse your flagging libido

Those endless pictures burned into my mind are fragments of our world together, arranged by you

          always by you

What you wanted was what I quietly became

          never ME

INTERCHANGEABLE ME

So that when you left for the final time, I fell into jumbled, painful, jagged pieces

No longer knowing who, or what, I truly am